The Fate We Made
by art-badger
Summary: Marcus Wright lived to join the Resistance. After the end of the war he remembers some of the events in his long friendship with John Connor. Spoilers and A/U for Terminator: Salvation.
1. The Fate We Made

The Fate We Made

Marcus Wright hugged his wife to his chest as they stood together looking out at the haze-shrouded ruins that had been the largest Skynet command complex in the world. Los Angeles had been the first hub they'd destroyed, the first city reclaimed by the Resistance from Skynet's control. Three days ago the last city had been reclaimed. The Cairo compound had been guarded by hundreds of HK's and Terminators, plasma cannons and more killing machines that the Resistance had never even heard of prior to the battle. Skynet had fought hard to defend its last command hub. The weeks-long siege of the Cairo hub had killed thousands of Resistance soldiers. Even John Connor hadn't walked away from the last battle. As he'd been issuing orders for the final advance a T-850 that Connor had though reprogrammed and turned to their side had assassinated him.

Blair rested her head on Marcus' shoulder and whispered up to him, reminding him that they would have to go soon to be there for the funeral. Kate Connor wanted them both to be there. They needed to change into something more respectable; for one thing Marcus needed pants. They also had to pick up the kids from Allison Young, the lieutenant who'd volunteered to baby-sit today.

Marcus let Blair out of his arms to get dressed. He sat on their bed while she showered, contemplating the recent events as he heard the water running. Their shower wasn't big enough for them to share and clean themselves at the same time. By the time he got his turn in the shower his mind was far away, lost in memory. As he reminisced he could hear Blair humming a sad song she remembered from her mother as she arranged her hair and painted on her battle makeup, the wide red stripe from temple to temple. He dried off and pulled on the almost-crisp new uniform Blair had produced for him to wear to Connor's funeral, not even really seeing it. His mind was going over the time he'd known John Connor, all the things they'd been through together.

**** **Connor's Second Chance** and **A Stolen Heart** ****

When Blair stopped humming to put on her lipstick, another thing along with the war paint and toothpaste that Marcus no longer bothered wondering where she got from, the quiet in their little room left Marcus listening to his own breathing and the pulse of his heart. He'd offered that heart to Connor nearly 15 years ago only for the medics to tell him it was impossible. Skynet hadn't been content to put his human heart into a cyborg body; it'd upgraded his heart as well. The upgrades made his heart too bulky, not to mention too strong, for Connor to survive a transplant.

If he focused, Marcus could still sift through the parts of the Skynet database that he'd downloaded into his mind during his confrontation with Skynet in the guise of Serena Kogan. He still knew the exact location of the cloning laboratory where Skynet had developed the technology that allowed them to make his cyborg body. Once Blair had him woken up after the surgeons declared the transplant impossible he'd told Kate about the lab and lead a team to seize control of it.

Marcus' mouth twisted with a grimace as he remembered the fight to take the lab from the Terminators guarding it. He'd been wrestling with a T-600 when Barnes had fired his RPG at it. For Connor's sake Marcus had let Barnes get away with trying to kill him that time. He'd been more interested in taking down the other machines and keeping Blair safe.

The gurgling sound of the shower tank refilling reminded him of the tanks of synthetic blood and other fluids that had bubbled and swirled in the Skynet medical lab. His fingers twitched slightly, recalling the complex string of commands he had used to make the lab's automated systems sample Connor's DNA once the Blackhawk had lifted the dying man to the lab. More commands had set the machines to work building Connor a new heart while the surgeons siphoned off enough of the synthetic blood to replace what Connor had lost.

Skynet hadn't had time between Marcus's rejection of its demands and its destruction to deactivate his security clearances. With full access to the lab's computers, Marcus had been able to direct Kate's surgical team through the long process of hooking Connor up to jury-rigged life support systems until the replacement heart was ready for implantation.

"Marcus? You ready?" Blair's voice broke into his reverie.

"Yeah, just my boots. One minute." He absently kissed her neck, knowing that she'd have his head if he smeared her war paint.

**** **Wedding Rings and Combat Boots** and **Her Machine Gun Man** ****

His freshly polished boots in place, he was dressed but for his ring. Marcus slid the gold band onto his finger and a faint smile tugged at his lips. Blair hadn't told him where she'd found two wedding rings and he'd never asked. When Marcus let out a soft chuckle at the memory of his engagement and wedding, Blair looked up at him.

"Marcus?" She didn't find much funny today. Normally she was the one with the sense of humor.

"Remembering our wedding. I was thinking of Connor's face when you came up the aisle in combat boots, carrying that damn bouquet of weeds."

"There were daisies in it too." Blair gave him a mock reproachful look before she too chuckled. She pressed her head against his shoulder for a moment, eyes closed. His gloved hand squeezed her shoulder gently. The skin had eventually grown back on his left hand, but it didn't look quite right and so he'd taken to wearing the glove when other folks were around. Blair never cared.

"He could have at least stopped laughing during the ceremony. I almost punched him" Blair muttered, focusing on the memory.

"Well, he might have been quiet if you hadn't made that poor old minister stop in the middle of the vows to remind her you weren't going to obey me."

She snorted into his shoulder. Suddenly she stiffened and looked up at him, face very controlled. He felt himself tense in response; that was never a good expression to see on Blair.

"Barnes is here. I heard from Sayles that he came in on the last flight from Kansas. I don't want any trouble today, Marcus. Promise me." Her eyes were hard and her hand gripped his hard enough that you'd think she was the one with steel instead of bones.

The day after their wedding Barnes and some of his friends had taken issue with Blair while she was out inspecting a shipment of spare parts from a friendly scavenger camp. She'd ended up with a broken arm and three broken ribs, all for getting married to a machine.

"Blair –" Marcus started, but Blair cut him off.

"I mean it, Wright. If I need anyone maimed, I'll do it myself and I'll do it _tomorrow_. It was very sweet of you to pay them back for me while I was in the infirmary, but I don't need it now and Connor deserves more respect."

"If he hadn't pulled me off Barnes, there wouldn't be a problem at all." Marcus grumbled but then nodded in response to Blair's demands.

"You wouldn't have killed him."

"No?"

"Nope. Connor couldn't have pulled you off anyone if you didn't let him, Machine Gun Man. You were just roughing him up a bit." Blair had taken to calling him that after she found out from Kyle about the Alice in Chains song.

Marcus put Barnes out of his mind. Blair could have taken care of Barnes even before the vicious bastard had earned himself a permanent limp and a shattered, useless arm.

**** **Wait Half An Hour For Good News ******

Allison flashed her bright smile at Blair and Marcus when they stopped by her post at the improvised school to pick up the two Connor kids and their own pair. Kate had asked Blair to get Robby and Sarah for her; she needed some time with John to herself. Tyler and Korinna, named for Marcus's brother and Blair's mother, were almost as distraught as the Connor twins at John Connor's death. They'd called him Uncle John since they'd been old enough to talk and had spent as much time with the Connors as with their parents or the Reese brothers. The youngest Connor, the year-old Kyle, wasn't coming to the service; his mother had said he was too young to understand. Allison would take care of him during the funeral.

While Allison chased down the four kids they'd come to fetch out of the herd, Marcus grinned at the memory of the last time Connor had taken a shot at him, about a year ago.

"Thinking about Connor again?" Blair whispered up to him, a small smile on her face.

"Remembering when he tried to shoot me for waiting half an hour to tell him Kate was pregnant with Kyle." Marcus's slow half-smile crept across his face as he watched the Connor kids giving Allison a workout.

"You deserved it. Kate wanted you to tell him that before you stormed that storage compound, not in the middle of the fire fight with half a dozen T-600's."

"Then Connor either shouldn't have told me that I had to wait thirty minutes before giving him any good news or he should have been wearing his flak jacket that day. I didn't make that rule."

Blair slapped his belly playfully, grinning. "You know he wasn't serious. I still can't believe you did that. But you did bruise three of his ribs when he congratulated us on Tyler."

"I told him I was sorry about that."

"You weren't though; you thought it was funny." Blair eyed him, half accusing, half amused herself.

Marcus gave a non-committal shrug. She was right, it had been funny, but he wasn't going to tell her she was right. Telling Blair she was right was as bad as telling that to Connor. Both of them just swelled up with it for days. Kate and Marcus both had often mentioned that Blair and John were lucky to have them around, otherwise the other soldiers would have shot them both dead for their egos years ago. In fair turn about, neither Blair nor Connor ever admitted that their spouses were correct about that.

Once they had the four children properly dressed, cleaned and in tow, Blair and Marcus joined the stream of soldiers and civilians heading for the funeral. John Connor would be the first man in over twenty years to be buried in a full service with this many mourners attending in uniforms and what now passed for finery instead of body armor. No one was carrying weapons. They didn't need them, thanks to the leadership and inspiration of the man whose life they were gathered to honor.

Taking his place in the front row of assembled guests, Marcus found himself standing next to Derek Reese, Kyle's older brother. The taller man eyed Marcus for a moment before nodding slightly. Derek hated _metal_ with an almost psychotic fervor, but he had accepted Marcus on Kyle's word.

**** **Laid to Rest** ****

Marcus supposed that the service had been nice. He hadn't listened to a thing anyone had said. He'd known ahead of time what the ones he cared about would say. He'd watched their faces and their eyes while their words washed over him. During the service he hadn't once felt his throat tighten with grief or his eyes water up with tears. Later, he'd probably feel something. He'd watched as friends and comrades told stories about how John Connor saved them personally and saved humanity itself.

After the service was over, Marcus joined Derek Reese, Daniel Dyson and General Perry. With the deaths of the last two decades they were the ones who had been closest to Connor still left alive. Blair had taken the children with her, leaving a grieving Kate Connor to her self for a few precious hours. John himself had found the glade they'd be burying him in, he'd mentioned to Kate that he wanted to be put to rest in a place with trees if they couldn't find the cemetery where his father's remains laid. They had never found Kyle's grave in the blasted ruins of LA so they were putting Connor to earth in this green place, where it was almost as if the nuclear Judgment Day had never happened. All four men took shovels and started to dig in the soft earth.

Marcus could have done it himself in a fraction of the time it took to let the others help, but he wouldn't take this away from them. They needed to do this as much as he did. He did pick up the coffin for them and set it in the cradle they'd lower it with, but all four men shared the work of lowering it into the grave. All four shared the work of filling the grave back in. Derek Reese, Connor's uncle although there were only three people alive that knew it, was the one who planted the stone at the head of the grave when they were finished.

After the others left, Marcus remained by John Connor's grave. He read the headstone they'd carved for the leader of the Human Resistance. It wasn't elaborate and the carving was pretty crude. It didn't matter.

_John Connor_

_1985 – 2032_

_There Is No Fate But What We Make_

Marcus sat down beside the stone and looked up at the sky where a few clouds drifted past the sun.

"Normally guys who try to kill me end up dead, Connor. You tried harder than most and you're still the first one I'm sorry about. When it came down to it, you believed that I was still a man, despite what they did to me. You treated me like a man and you trusted me. I know they can take care of themselves, but I'm going to look out for Kate and Robby and Sarah. You took care of my kids for me when I couldn't. It's only fair."

Wright paused and looked down at the headstone. He didn't even know if he believed in God or an afterlife. He hadn't really bothered to think about it before he died the first time. He hadn't seen anything while he was dead. After he came back, he still didn't know. Still, it felt right talking to Connor.

"You did a good job, Connor. Tell Kyle that I'm keeping an eye on Derek and Star for him."

He stopped again. Should he give a message for his brother? Or even for Serena Kogan, who he'd traded his body to for a kiss? Slowly, he shook his head. He wouldn't trouble them. Serena, at least, Marcus was sure was at peace. She'd fought her own private war against death until the bitter end and managed to give him the second chance she'd talked about, even if he doubted this was what she'd had in mind. His brother was probably resting well too after thirty years. John and Kyle he still owed something to.

"You gave me my second chance, John Connor. I'll make sure your family gets theirs, if they need it. Same for Kyle. Rest easy."

Marcus got up and gave the stone one final look before he turned and started back towards the base. He had people to watch out for. He couldn't do that while sitting by a grave.


	2. Connor's Second Chance

Connor's Second Chance

As soon as he regained consciousness Marcus knew they had cut into him. He could feel the incision in his chest already trying to knit itself back together. His eyes didn't want to open; the drugs hadn't fully cleared from his system.

"Marcus, can you hear me?" Blair sounded concerned and he realized the pressure on his chest wasn't just a restraint; Blair's hand was pressed against his heart. Which was still there. He felt it beating.

"Connor?" the name stuck in his mouth, still feeling like it was stuffed full of cotton from the drugs. Blair knew what he meant anyway. He forced his eyes open and saw her gave a shaky smile and pat his chest.

"They can't do the transplant, Marcus. Your heart is too powerful; it's been enhanced, some parts were replaced. The surgeons said your normal blood pressure would kill Connor in a few days, especially wounded like he is now."

"What's--" he had to stop and clear his throat before his voice was understandable. "What can they do for him?"

Blair's voice got tight and very quiet. "They don't know. He – he doesn't have much time left, they think."

A memory flashed through his head, something he'd seen while he tore through the Skynet database looking for anything about what they'd done to him. He tried to bring it into focus and stars exploded in his brain. The same rush of information as when he'd linked with the database yesterday flashed through him again. Gigabytes of information flowed through his mind and he wrestled with the stream to track down the files he wanted. Distantly he heard Blair gasp and opened his eyes, concerned.

"You're hurting my arm, Marcus." He realized that he'd grabbed her wrist with his left hand, the metal one. He didn't let her go, but he released the pressure on her wrist and brought it to his mouth, putting a gentle kiss on the bruise he knew would form soon.

"I'm sorry. Where's Kate? I know where we can get help for Connor."

"Kate's with John, in the other tent. What do you know?" Blair was confused.

"When I was in Skynet, I got into their computers. It let me in, hooked up into my mind. I was looking to find out what they'd done to me and there's a lab somewhere." He hesitated. "98 miles northwest of San Francisco. I can show you. There's machines there that can" Marcus trailed off again, distracted. He could see the data stream like it was printed on a paper right in front of him "Accelerate cellular growth for human tissue production." Marcus was surprised on some level that he understood what that meant, but he wasn't going to question it. "I think we can get Connor a new heart."

Blair ran to get Kate almost as soon as the words were out of Marcus' mouth. The two women returned in seconds with Barnes, Kyle and Star trailing behind them. Kate's eyes were red and her cheeks were stained with tears.

"You're sure this Skynet facility can save John's life? You know where it is, you can take a team there?" Kate didn't waste any time because she knew there wasn't any to spare.

"I know where it is," Marcus hesitated for a moment about the first question, running over the files in his head. How much of what was in there did he really understand and how much was just what he could read from them? The files didn't say anything about growing replacement parts for people that had been stabbed through the heart with metal beams. Still, he was almost certain the machines there could do what he wanted, what Connor needed. "I'm sure about it. The machines there were designed to grow living tissue for the Terminators. When Skynet had me, it used a machine like the ones there to heal me."

"And we're supposed to believe you?" Barnes was disgusted that Connor had even bothered to drag Marcus from the battlefield. Wounded, in shock, Connor's judgment about the machine had to be clouded. It was a _machine_, by God. It's offer to sacrifice itself had been a lie, it had to know that its heart wouldn't work before hand.

Kate cut off angry replies from Blair, Marcus and Kyle with a hand. "John trusted him, that's enough for me. He didn't have to save John in there but he did. How long until you can get up, Marcus?"

Marcus pulled the IV out of his arm and swung his legs off the bed. A wave of dizziness assaulted him but it cleared in seconds. He stood up slowly and tugged at the bandages on his torso. They fell away, revealing a nasty looking scar down the center of his chest. It didn't hurt any more then his left hand did, stripped of all its flesh.

"I'm good right now. Get me a map, I'll show you where we're going. Then tell me whose coming with me."

Kate send Kyle running to the command tent to fetch maps. While they waited for the boy to return she rummaged in one of the drawers in a portable storage bin and produced Marcus's battered grey T-shirt and a spare jacket. Marcus accepted them with a nod and pulled them on. In the cold of this post-nuclear world even his cyborg body showed goose bumps shirtless. They'd left his pants on him apparently.

As soon as Kyle returned with the maps Marcus spread out the correct one and marked the location of the lab. He flipped through the stack for a closer view and found one shortly.

"The lab is underground in an old military bunker that the machines refitted for this research. There shouldn't be much in the way of defenses, the idea is that no one would ever know it's there. There aren't any automated defenses, but there will probably be some 600's there. The bunker was going to be scrapped and all its files and contents shifted to the main production facility under the Hub that we just blew up. The transfer was supposed to start in a week so everything should still be intact."  
"Good thing you know all these facts that just happen to be so essential right now. How come you didn't know this before?" Barnes glared openly at the shorter man. Marcus would have ignored him but Blair's hand tightened around his and he figured she wanted him to respond too.

"When I was there, I got inside Skynet's database. That's how I shut off the defenses so Connor could follow me in. I wanted to know what they'd done to me, so I looked for everything tagged related to my name. All this information came up. I woke up in the Skynet VLA facility you guys attacked, but these files say all the work to turn me into whatever I am now was done here, at this lab."

"They just let you into their databases, huh?"

"That's right. They had to, so they could download everything I'd seen, heard and learned since I woke up." Marcus stared Barnes down before turning his gaze to the others in turn. He wasn't going to keep this a secret. "There was a chip in the back of my head that recorded everything I did and let them get into my head. It's gone now; I pulled it out. Once we save Connor you can X-ray me or do a CAT scan or whatever. I'm my own man now, they can't control me." His eyes dared anyone to say different.

Blair's hands went to the back of his head and he felt her part his hair to see the skin. "There's a scar here. You ripped the chip out of your own _head_, Marcus? With what?"

"My fingers. I didn't have a knife at the time." A knife might not have worked anyway with his metal skull.

Blair and Kyle stared at him in a combination of awe, admiration and a bit of disgust. Tearing your own head open was pretty inhuman, but the reason he'd done it was nothing a machine would ever understand. Kate just nodded and motioned for him to get back on subject. Her husband was dying while they debated whose side his most likely savior was on.

"We can take the lab and destroy the guards. We'll have to get Connor there, I doubt we can bring enough of the machines out of there and get them hooked up fast enough to save him. It's going to be hard enough to make them do this without trying to move them first."

Kate thought for a moment, then gave a sharp nod. "Barnes will go with you, and every one I can spare from the forces we used to extract you and John from Skynet. That will give you fifteen, maybe twenty men."

"And me, Kate. I'm going with him." Blair tightened her hand on Marcus' and gave him a smile.

"I want to go too." From the back of the tent Kyle Reese gave all the adults a hard look. "Connor said I was Resistance now."

There was a strange expression on Kate's face but slowly she gave in. "Alright. Both of you can go. Give me twenty minutes to get the others organized and supplied. I'll have two of the Apaches ready to carry you by then. Whatever plans you can make, do it now."

Marcus shook his head as Kate left to get the helicopters started pre-flighting and the soldiers briefed on their mission. Her husband dying a few yards away and still she could give any warden he'd ever met a run for their money. Connor better be damn proud of that woman. Turning back to the maps, Marcus started to sketch out as much as he knew of the lab they'd be assaulting. He listed every detail he could pull up from the files he had stolen. In nineteen minutes they'd be on their way to fight for John Connor's second chance and Marcus was determined that he'd get it.


	3. A Stolen Heart

A Stolen Heart

Marcus sat wedged between Kyle and Blair in the crowded helicopter carrying half his strike force from the hastily assembled command center where John Connor lay dying to the Skynet research lab where his one hope might be found. The other half of his force was on a second identical helicopter a few hundred yards away. Kate Connor had given him 20 men, plus Kyle, Blair and Barnes. Out of all of them only Kyle and Blair trusted him. Barnes and most of the others were openly hostile, willing to listen to him only on Kate's orders and John's word. A few of the men and women had looked at him with uncertain expressions as he briefed them on the mission. He figured they were still on the fence about cyborgs that claimed to be men.

If everything went well it would be twenty-four well-armed and prepared Resistance fighters against maybe four to six Terminators in the lab. All the files Marcus had stolen from Skynet's central databases told him the base was in the process of being mothballed; its research and data to be transferred to the main Infiltrator production facility that the Resistance had just nuked to hell. He hoped that meant a minimum defense allotment. There were twenty-five lives depending on him being right.

Even a handful of Terminators was going to be a hell of a fight in the closed quarters of an underground laboratory where the Resistance fighters were constrained by the necessity of inflicting the absolute minimum in collateral damage. They couldn't afford to go in with bombs bursting and guns blazing; there was too much risk of destroying the information and machines they needed to save John Connor's life.

Kate had given John's weapons and armor to Marcus, they were the only set to spare. Kyle was wearing a dead soldier's armor and whatever weapons he'd scavenged from the battlefield around San Francisco. The others were in their full combat load out. Marcus hoped it would be enough.

The pilot's voice crackled through Marcus' earpiece telling him and the other soldiers they were five minutes from the drop off point. Blair acknowledged the pilot's warning and, after waiting several seconds for Marcus to say something, told everyone to get ready.

Marcus clapped Kyle on the shoulder and gave him a lop-sided grin. He yelled in the boy's ear to be heard, "You'll do fine, kid!"

Kyle glared at Marcus, apparently incensed that the older man was now lecturing him when only days before Kyle had been the one saving Marcus' ass when he foolishly walked right up to a T-600 and tried to get its attention.

The landing and drop off had gone well. As Marcus had thought there were no automated defenses announcing this facility's existence to the world. He hadn't seen any Terminators patrolling around the bunker either. As far as any of the soldiers could tell the facility was already abandoned, which could have been either good news or bad. Bad news indeed if they'd gone to all this effort only to find that the facility was already empty of everything they needed for Connor. It'd have been worse if the medical machines were gone and some of the Terminators had remained behind.

Fortune was with them, to a degree. A Hispanic lieutenant had rigged charges to blast open the bunker's armored doors, gaining them entrance in seconds. Marcus charged inside before the smoke finished clearing. He hadn't notice the darkness in the facility until Blair had cracked a flare and his eyes had momentarily been blinded by the explosion of light. He put out of his mind that he'd been seeing just fine without the flare in the near-total darkness of the underground chamber. It wasn't important right then.

Marcus yelled out that this wasn't the room they needed, clearing the others to open fire if attacked. They moved forward, following close on Marcus' trail as he descended deeper into the facility.

"Is this the part where your robot buddies jump out and blow us to bits?" one of Barnes' friends sneered from a few feet behind Marcus. Blair bristled at his side, but Marcus ignored the man. Unless the soldier caused real problems it wasn't worth his effort.

The irony was not lost on Marcus when the first Terminator appeared seconds later and the sneering soldier went down in the first barrage of bullets. The concentrated fire of the remaining fighters took down the T-1 in short order, though its guns claimed two more lives before its red optics went dark.

Twice more the team was ambushed as they penetrated deeper into the complex. The second attack was a 600 that went down under a storm of bullets before it got a single shot off. The next Terminator was smarter then its partner and appeared from the darkened recessed of the base behind the group, mowing down three of the rear guard before it was destroyed.

"This is it. The cloning lab is in this section." Marcus indicated an unmarked hallway lit only by dim red panels built into the walls. "Once we're in the lab, watch your fire. You might as well put your gun to Connor's head as blow the machines in there."

Barnes looked as though he wanted to protest but he knew as well as anyone that Connor's life depended on finding help in here. He'd make a deal with the devil if it saved John Connor. Hell, he already had, coming this far. He just nodded.

The final assault came unexpectedly though, in retrospect Marcus realized it was obvious there would be at least one guard outside such an important room. Just as he'd found the entrance to the cloning lab, Blair let out a warning yell. A skeletal machine of dark metal appeared from the shadows a few feet to the left of the door and advanced on the group. It wasn't carrying a mini-gun like the 600's; it didn't seem to have any weapons at all. Marcus at first thought it was an 800 like the ones in Skynet's central production facility but this machine was larger and bulkier. When he saw it more clearly it popped into his head that this was a T-750 combat model, the bridge from the 600 design to the more streamlined and compact 800.

The 750 went right for Blair. Roaring a wordless challenge, Marcus hurled himself at the killing machine, knocking it away from Blair with the force of his tackle. He knew even as he did so that this was stupid. He'd tried wrestling with the 800 to save Connor and it had taken the machine only moments to analyze him, find his weakness and nearly kill him. He had in fact been dead for a few short minutes until Connor shocked his heart back into action with a live power cable. This would probably end no better.

"Marcus!" Blair screamed his name in panic as she saw him tackle the Terminator away from her. Kyle's voice joined hers in wordless protest. Both of them aimed their weapons, though neither fired, unwilling to shoot Marcus in the attempt to hit the robot wrestling him.

The other members of the team did not have that hesitation. Marcus took several bullets meant for the 750, howling with the pain of them even as he struggled to pin the Terminator where the others could get clean shots. He found himself fairly matched in main strength against the thing, but it outweighed him by at least 354 pounds and was 40% larger then he was.

A lucky shot struck home, smashing one of the robot's optics and damaging the other. Marcus flinched as shrapnel burned into his face but he took advantage of the machine's disorientation to flip it onto its back and get his hands into its chest, ripping off the armor plating that covered the delicate insides. He knew that somewhere in the armored chest there was the power supply, the machine's only real weakness aside from its processing chip.

For a moment he saw design diagrams and blueprints in his head. He knew where the power supply was, what it looked like, how much force it would take to pull it free of its housing and that he could generate that force easily. He almost laughed until he heard Kyle shout a warning.

"Marcus! Look out!"

His head snapped around just in time. It wasn't another Terminator. Barnes had an RPG aimed at him. He'd claim it was for the Terminator, but Barnes had seen his opportunity. He fired.

Marcus might have been willing to shield Blair from a RPG blast with his body but he'd be damned if he'd do the same for a Terminator that was trying to kill him. He rolled over on his side, hauling the Terminator along with him. The grenade slammed into the machine's upper back and exploded in a violent fireball. The metal hulk shielded him from most of it, but Marcus felt the bloom of heat across his face and arms and knew he'd have burns.

Black rage grew in his mind, snarling at him to finish off the Terminator and go for Barnes. He knew that he could rip the man's head off his body without any effort. Or he could crush the man into a pulp. Kill him any of a hundred ways, all without breaking a sweat, none of them taking more then 12 seconds. Most wouldn't even take a fourth of that time.

Ignoring the rage and the burns, Marcus plunged his hand into the Terminator's chest and pulled. The robot bucked once on top of him as it tried to stop him, then went rigid. Marcus spat into its face as the red glow in its remaining eye went out. He was careful not to rupture the power cell as he removed it. He dropped it on top of the machine's body as he hauled himself to his feet.

His eyes found Barnes and the other man simply looked at him, expressionless. There was nothing in Barnes' eyes except vague disappointment. Blair yelled at Barnes, berating him for being so stupid as to use the RPG in such close quarters. She hadn't realized that Barnes intended the blast for Marcus as much as for the machine.

If Marcus hadn't gotten the Terminator in between him and the grenade, it would have taken him in the chest. Marcus' armored back had shrugged off the first RPG shot Barnes took at him, back when Blair helped him escape from Connor's base. It seemed a lot less likely that his human heart would escape unscathed if attacked from the front. Barnes had been trying to kill him.

Marcus had shot the last man who tried to kill him, a cop who opened fire on him and his brother as they tried to flee the scene of a botched car jacking. He'd done worse to the man's partner after the cop gunned his brother down as he tried to surrender. Part of him wanted to do worse to Barnes. All of Skynet's technology wouldn't fix what he could do to the man.

"Let's go. There won't be any more inside the lab. Someone get back to the surface, radio for them to bring in Connor now that the path is clear." Marcus turned to the door and allowed the laser set into the security panel to scan his eye. He heard some of the soldiers make muted exclamations as the laser pulse made his pupil flare red. The door chimed acceptance of Marcus' identity and slid open.

The lab was unpleasant. Vats of synthetic blood were being slowly circulated to prevent coagulation. Other, less identifiable, fluids bubbled in tanks or coursed through webs of tubing. Once Marcus set foot inside, the lights came on. Everything was brilliantly bathed in sterile white light. Rows of tanks contained biological specimens and the maturing tissue samples that would eventually become flesh and skin for the Infiltrators. In the back of the room Marcus spotted something that he recognized at once. He had wondered why his tattoos hadn't followed him back from the grave. He had an answer now: cloning did not replicate tattoos. The flesh that covered up his metal skeleton was not the same flesh he'd been born with; it was a copy.

He was looking at the original now, or what was left of it. Serena Kogen's people had done what he asked: they'd cut him up until there was nothing left. There was no way anyone else would know what was floating in that specimen tank. He put it out of his mind. Maybe later he'd find someone to re-do those tattoos, at least the important ones. He grinned to himself as he thought of a few of them that he was just fine without explaining to Blair. The one for his brother at least, he wanted back. He'd gotten the rooster on his right arm in the day he'd had before the police had tracked him down after he killed the two cops. His brother's favorite song had been Rooster by Alice in Chains. Tyler had carried the song around on a tape or CD so they could listen to it whenever they went for a joyride.

Barnes sent half the strike team back up to the surface to get word to Kate and her team of medics that the way was clear. Marcus had an hour until they arrived with Connor. He pushed thoughts of his old life to the back of his mind and got to work.

The laboratory's main computers hummed to themselves innocently as Marcus approached. Blair and Kyle followed closely. Barnes was watching all three, his hands still gripping his rifle in case Marcus tried anything.

With an expression of distaste Marcus pressed his hands against the control surfaces as he'd done in Skynet Central. There was an agonizing spike of pain that drove itself deep into his brain, the same as before. A second later it was gone. Bland words flashed across the screen.

"Synch complete. User ID: Marcus Wright. Security clearance accepted."

The words were replaced a second later by streams of data. They flashed past faster then human eyes could follow, but Marcus wasn't reading them. They were in his head and he was already sifting through the information. He didn't understand what the lab's computers were telling him, but he didn't really need to. Kate might have understood some of the technical information on cellular generation and tissue growth patterns. Marcus just needed to access the command systems and tell the machines what he wanted them to do.

"Can you make these things help him, Marcus?" Blair's soft question nearly broke his concentration. He'd forgotten she was there, one hand on his shoulder.

"I think so. I'll know for sure once we get started. It will take time."

"How long?"

Marcus closed his eyes again and shifted the focus of his queries. "Three days. Maybe four. Faster and he could die from shock or the tissue might go wrong and turn on his body like cancer. Three days is what the system is set to. I'm asking it to do something it isn't designed for, it might take longer."

"How are we going to hold this place for –" Kyle started to protest but Blair cut him off.

"We'll hold it for as long as it takes. There aren't any reinforcements coming in from San Francisco and that was the nearest Skynet base. The next closest major base is in L.A. I'd bet Skynet isn't too keen on another all out attack so soon after we just whupped its ass. It might not even be able to field one. Central was supposed to be the coordination center for the entire network. Who knows how badly we hurt it yesterday?"

Kyle's face hardened and he nodded. "Right. We'll hold."

"Damn straight we will, kid." Blair ruffled Kyle's hair in a friendly gesture, but her attention was still on Marcus as he hunched over the computer, his expression blank. She shivered as she noticed the ruddy glow deep inside his eyes that turned his blue eyes almost purple. It was one thing to know that Marcus had been made into a cyborg. It was another to see him doing things like this where his humanity was almost gone. He wasn't moving, wasn't breathing. Without her hand on his shoulder, feeling the warmth of his flesh and the faint tremble of muscles clenched in effort, she would have thought he really was a machine.

The Blackhawk carrying John and Kate's team of medics landed right on time. Connor was escorted down into the cloning lab by Barnes and the surviving strike team soldiers. Only Blair and Kyle remained with Marcus in the lab while the others went to fetch Connor. Marcus didn't stir from the position he'd assumed an hour previous when he'd answered Blair's last question. He remained hunched over the computer terminals, hands pressed flat against the blank control panels, eyes glowing faintly red. Despite his inactivity, he knew exactly when Connor's gurney was about to be wheeled in. He'd been following the medical team's progress through the lab's internal security devices after he checked to ensure the strike team had removed all the Terminators stationed in the facility, which they had.

"Marcus?" Kate reached out to touch his arm, even more disturbed then Blair by his inhuman display.

"I'm here, Kate." Marcus' voice was rough with strain. "This isn't easy."

"Do you know what we need to do next, Marcus? John hasn't got much strength left." Kate's own voice was as bad as Marcus'. She'd had nothing to do but watch her husband slowly die while she waited for hope.

"Get him onto one of the surgical tables." Marcus pulled a hand up from the interface and pointed at where he wanted John. "You brought equipment with you?"

"Everything we could pack into the helicopter. What do we need?"

"I don't know yet. I will once he's on the table." Marcus frowned, the first change in expression since he'd put his hands on the computer. He hoped he'd know.

Kate nodded and called out the orders in a firm tone. John's unconscious body was transferred onto the table Marcus had indicated. The table hummed to life as internal systems activated on Marcus' command, beginning an analysis of the wounded man.

"He needs more blood." Marcus was trying to summarize what the medical systems were telling him. He gave directions for the medics to start siphoning synthetic blood from one of the vats and transfusing it into Connor's body. Relieved that something as simple as a transfusion was the first step, the medics quickly had the tubes set and the blood flowing. Marcus made an approving noise as he monitored Connor's condition.

Barnes raised an alarm seconds later, rifle coming up to bear on a new threat. A small, uncomplicated machine had detached itself from a storage dock in the back of the lab and was slowly rolling across the floor towards Connor's table.

Kate grabbed Barnes' rifle and yanked it down, snarling at him. Marcus' voice cut across the protests from the soldiers, Barnes and Kate. "I turned it on. It's going to take tissue samples from Connor for the cloning programs. It won't hurt him."

Barnes watched in mute disgust as the rolling arm reached Connor's side and extended a probe toward the man's unresponsive form. The probe extended a slender needle and, with surgical precision, inserted it into Connor's abdomen. It retracted seconds later, its job complete. The robot arm rolled itself back to its storage dock and plugged back in after depositing the sample in the appropriate receptacle.

"Now ain't that just creepy as all fuck." Barnes muttered to himself, watching the arm go about its business. Kate said nothing, though she rather agreed.

"Program initiated; 86 hours until program completion." The flat, mechanical tone of Marcus' statement sent chills through the humans in the room.

"What does that mean, Marcus?" Blair swallowed, looking for any trace of the man in Marcus' face.

"That's how long it will take to grow him a new heart." The red glow in his eyes faded as Marcus lifted his hands from the computer panels. He slumped to the floor of the lab, leaning against a wall, head back and eyes closed. Blair noticed for the first time that his shirt was dark with sweat.

"He doesn't have that long." Kate sounded strangled. They'd done all this and it would be too late. John Connor would die.

"When his heart gives out, the program will alert us. Give me a minute or two. I think I can rework one of the vat circulation pumps to work for Connor. It should give him enough time for the cloning program to run."

"Can't you do that now? His heart could give out any minute." Kate was close to losing her composure.

"I can't even stand up right now. I can't see straight either. I have to put my head back together first." It was more complicated then that, but Marcus couldn't come up with words to describe what was going on inside his mind. To control the lab's systems he had given over to the technology that Skynet had put in his brain. He'd been processing information instead of thinking. It was hard to go back. Even the hour or so he'd spent with code streaming through his head had left its mark. If he could help it, he wouldn't ever do this again. It felt like the code was eating away at him, turning him into the machine Skynet had wanted to make him. Connor was going to owe him one hell of a lot if this worked.

John Connor's eyes opened slowly. Everything around him was brilliant white. He blinked several times, trying to clear his vision. Slowly things began to come into focus. He was laying on his back in some large, white room. He could hear someone snoring in the background.

"Kate?"

"I'm here, John. How do you feel?" Kate was smiling down at him, gently stroking his face, avoiding the tender area around the scratch from the T-800's final grasp for his life.

"I hurt everywhere, especially my chest and my back." He groaned and tried to sit up, but Kate hurriedly restrained him. The snoring stopped with a grunt and a curse as someone was rudely awakened.

"Don't try getting up yet, John. They only finished the surgery an hour ago."

John remembered listening through a haze of drugs and pain as Marcus offered his own heart to replace the one that John had lost. He'd seen the other man lay down on a table next to him, then he'd blacked out.

"How is Blair doing? And Kyle?" His father, the sixteen year old boy, had seemed to genuinely care for the cyborg. Blair had risked her life to save him from Connor himself and then had him ripped away from her anyway. He knew they both must be suffering.

"They're fine, John. Everyone's fine. Marcus saved you." Kate's smile was full of wonder.

"He was a good man. We'll remember him that way."

"That's it? Damn, Connor, I expected something a lot more stirring." The rough baritone was thick with exhaustion and irritation. He'd been enjoying a well-deserved rest after four days of work running the lab's computers and translating Skynet code for the programmers and medics. Blair had most certainly not needed to wake him up like that.

"Marcus?" John craned his neck, trying to see the source of the voice. That was impossible. Was his heart just some kind of cover? Well, when he thought about it, what did a cyborg even need a human heart for?

"You'd think a super-advanced cyborg with the strength of ten men and bulletproof bones wouldn't **snore** like a chainsaw, wouldn't you?" Blair leaned over Connor, grinning.

"I do not snore." Marcus was distinctly annoyed. He covered his mouth as he yawned.

"Yeah, sure. I've got twenty witnesses that not only do you snore, you snore loud enough that I'm amazed the Terminators in L.A. didn't hear you and come running."

Connor looked back and forth between the three standing over him. His eyes found Barnes too, standing behind Kate, his face hard. That would probably be due to Marcus' proximity. "I'm missing something."

"We tried to do the transplant, John, but Marcus' heart would have killed you. It's been adjusted to handle his hybrid systems. I don't think we could have made the transplant at all; his heart has physical modifications we didn't see from the outside. When he woke up, he told us about this place –" Kate launched into a summary of the events of the past four days, detailing Marcus' description of the Skynet medical lab, the assault on the lab and the work Marcus and Kate's team had done to grow a new heart and get it into Connor before the jury-rigged life support systems gave out.

Absorbing the information slowly, Connor reached out slowly and grasped Marcus' forearm. The other man looked down at him, a smug grin on his face. "Thank you, Marcus."

"I told you, Connor. Everyone deserves a second chance. You gave me one, I'm just returning the favor."

"You do a hell of a job returning a favor, then." A weak grin flickered on John's face. He blinked, looking down. Kate was pressing a syringe into his arm.

Marcus matched Connor's grin with his own, patting the other man on the shoulder. "Yeah, I do. You'll have lots of chances to pay me back, though, won't you?"

"Let him sleep, Marcus." Kate shooed the others away and brushed her hand across John's forehead where the light effort of talking had already raised sweat. "We'll be back at the base when you wake up."

"What about this place?"

"Marcus spent the last two days while the machines were doing their work telling us how to take it apart. After we leave a team of engineers and techs is going to cannibalize it. Go to sleep, John. I'll explain everything back at home."

Connor tried to tell her that he needed to know now, but his tongue got in the way. He realized that Kate had jabbed him with a sedative; his protests were lost as the drug went to work and he sank into sleep.

When Connor came to he heard someone sitting nearby. He pried his eyes open and saw that Marcus was lounging in a chair next to his bed, playing with a knife. He was tossing it back and forth between his hands with blinding speed. Literally blinding in this case because Connor's eyes couldn't follow the knife except when Marcus paused its flight to dance it between his fingers. Marcus didn't seem to notice that Connor was awaken until John rasped out a few words.

"Marcus? Where's Kate?"

The big cyborg jumped in his chair and his knife went flying off track. Connor realized at that time that surprising someone who was engaged in a complicated series of high-speed knife tricks about a foot away from your face was a bad idea. The idea was very nearly driven home before Marcus snagged the knife out of the air an inch from Connor's eye.

"That really wasn't your best idea, Connor. Give a guy some warning next time."

Connor swallowed. He was about to apologize when he caught the gleam of humor in Marcus' eyes.

"That wasn't funny, Wright!"

A grin slowly crept across Marcus' face as he flipped the knife again. The grin grew wider as he closed his eyes and kept flipping the knife. "You sure?"

"Asshole. You could have missed."

"I figure that even if I did miss, you'd still owe me for offering you my heart and when that didn't work, leading a team into a Skynet medical lab, taking it over and growing you a new one."

"I'd owe you a hell of a lot less if your damn knife tricks cost me an eyeball."

"Please, Connor." Marcus sounded mildly offended, "I wouldn't even have missed when I was human. I used to do that all the time with my brother. Scared the crap out of him too." Marcus' grin was still wide and smug. Connor very much wanted to punch it off his face, but enough of the drugs were still in his system so that he couldn't summon the energy.

"Kate's asleep right now. She wanted me to wake her when you came around." Marcus slipped the knife into a sheath strapped to his thigh.

"When did she go to sleep?"

"About an hour ago." Connor's mouth opened, but Marcus answered the next question without prompting. "She's been awake for two days. Blair had to slip her something in her coffee and I carried her to her bed."

"Don't wake her up."

"I wasn't going to. Blair's with her, making sure no one wakes her up. We knew you'd want her to get some sleep."

"The equipment from the lab?" Connor remembered trying to get Kate to tell him everything before she put him under.

"The important parts are being assembled now. When I'm not watching you, I'm down there helping them wire everything properly. I bet it'll come in handy once your geeks figure out how to make the systems to take commands from ordinary keyboards instead of my brain."

Connor gave a weak nod. His hand slowly found his chest and pressed against the bandages covering the surgical incision. He felt the strong, steady throb of his new heart beating away.

"Will it last?"

Marcus shrugged. "Probably. I hate to break it to you, Connor, but I'm not a doctor. I didn't even finish high school. Dropped out my junior year cause I needed to get out of Texas for a while."

"You know things, though, about Skynet and the machines." John wasn't accusing the big cyborg, he was just stating a fact.

"I only know what I read off the files stuffed in my brain. Nothing in there about growing new hearts for people. I sort of guessed my way through. I've always been good at making machines do what I want." Marcus' grin returned, "Admittedly cloning labs are a few steps up from cars and security systems."

Connor accepted the implication that, before, Marcus had been a criminal. He'd done more then a few illegal things himself in his youth, on the run from a future that only he and his mother had believed in. Whatever Marcus had done before, it didn't matter to Connor any more then it seemed to matter to Blair. The man had risked his neck to save John's life, Kyle's life, Blair's life, the lives of lots of other people he'd never even met. That made him a big damn hero as far as John Connor was concerned, no matter what his bones were made of or what he'd been in the past.

"Are you staying with us, Marcus? With the Resistance?" Connor caught the other man's blue gaze and held it. He saw doubt flicker in those eyes for only half a second. The slow, creeping grin brought warmth into the eyes as it spread across Marcus' face.

"Yeah, I'm staying. If this is my second chance, I don't plan to waste it."

John nodded, relived, "Wake me up when Kate finishes resting." Connor had used up all the energy he had. Already his eyes were closing of their own accord.

Marcus barked a laugh, "You can wake your own damn self up, Connor."

The last thing Connor heard before he fell back asleep was the sound of Marcus' chair protesting as the big man leaned back and returned to his knife tricks. Marcus would keep an eye out.


	4. Wedding Rings and Combat Boots

Wedding Rings and Combat Boots

Marcus was vaguely aware of Blair stirring in his arms, but the larger part of his mind simply wanted to go back to sleep. He mumbled wordless protests at her as she uncurled herself from his embrace. When she got out of the cot they shared, letting cold air in under the blanket he hissed a curse in stronger protest. Cold didn't precisely bother him, but it was still unpleasant to have the warmth sucked away from his flesh so early in the morning.

"Marcus, are you awake?" Blair's lips were right next to his ear; he could feel the warmer air of her breath across his face.

Instead of responding he reached up and pulled her in for a quick kiss, giving a slow, sleepy smile. He didn't necessarily need to sleep and he could be fully alert at a moment's notice but the habits of a lifetime were hard to break. He'd never been a fan of waking up for anything before the sun was well into the sky. Blair, though, was worth getting up for any time she wanted him to.

"Do I have to be?" But only if she _really_ wanted him to get up.

"Not right now, no." She laughed at him as he grunted in pleasure and slumped back into the bed. "I've got scavenger duty in an hour or so. There's something for you to take care of on the desk. I'll be back around 3; make sure you take care of it before then."

Marcus grunted and dozed while he listened to Blair gather up her clothes and equipment. When she left for the locker rooms to shower for the day he glanced over at the desk and saw a battered cardboard box with a Chinese label that suggested it was something electronic she wanted him to fix. Later.

Finding Connor was usually easy. Today, of course, Connor would be making himself scarce. Marcus had checked the command room, Connor's office and radioed Kate in the infirmary. Nothing. Kate hadn't even talked to him, the other base medic, Dr. Walsh, had said she'd be busy all day. He hadn't known where to find Connor either.

Finally he found the man in the mess hall eating his breakfast. It occurred to Marcus that he might have checked here earlier if he bothered to eat regularly. He ate ravenously whenever he was wounded; his accelerated healing drained his body of energy and it needed organic material to regrow any damaged tissue. Aside from that, he came into the mess hall only once or twice a week.

Marcus sat across from Connor, who nodded to him as he spooned cereal into his mouth.

"I need to find a priest." Marcus waited politely for Connor to finish choking and offered the man a napkin to clean his face where his spit-take had splashed a bit of milk.

"What for? Did someone die?" Connor still looked a bit shell shocked by Marcus's statement.

For an answer, Marcus held out the cardboard box that Blair had left on their desk. The contents were not the battery charger that the Mandarin label proclaimed. Sometimes it was rather useful, being able to speak the twenty most common languages fluently. Connor shook the box and noted the rattle from inside. He eyed Marcus suspiciously.

"Is it a bomb?"

"No, Connor, I didn't get it from Kyle. Just look inside."

Cautiously Connor opened the box and peered inside, holding the thing at some distance from his face. His expression shifted from suspicion to surprise when he saw the contents. He pulled out the note that Blair had stuffed inside and read it to himself. He looked from the note to Marcus's face and back again.

Marcus,

If I don't have one of these back from you by tonight, I will find you. I'll have my grenade launcher with me when I do.

Love,

Blair

"When did Blair get a grenade launcher?" Of course that was the first question that Connor had.

"Kyle gave her his for her birthday. I'm going to have a talk with him about giving her heavy weapons." Marcus's lips twitched a bit.

"You've survived grenades before, you'll be fine. I think one of the day school minders used to be a minister. I'll find out where she is today and see if she'll perform the ceremony." Connor was doing a pretty good job taking things in stride.

"Thanks, Connor." Marcus paused, unsure of how to continue. With the exception of anger, he wasn't good at expressing emotions. Kyle had once observed that he'd eaten more expressive coyotes. "I'd like you to be there John. And I'm going to need some help setting things up. If you're willing."

Connor stared at the other man for several seconds. Marcus started to think Connor was about to laugh at him, in which case he'd have to debate the merits of punching out General John Connor, but Connor saved him the effort. "Of course I'll be there, Marcus. I didn't think you'd want to ask me."

"You don't think I like you?" The other man almost sounded hurt.

That stumped Connor again. Marcus had risked his life to save Connor several times, even offered his own heart for transplant when Connor's had been damaged in the fight with the prototype T-800 two years ago. He'd lead a team to invade a Skynet facility where he'd been able to subvert the Skynet cloning machines to grow a new heart for Connor when a transplant turned out to be impossible. Despite all Marcus had done for him, Connor had never specifically gotten the impression Marcus liked him on a personal level. He knew the big cyborg loved Blair, anyone with a brain could tell that. He was a strange mix of father and older brother to Kyle Reese and might as well have the little girl Star attached to his hip. Aside from them, though?

"You trusted me to save Kyle two years ago. You risked your life to save me during the fight with the 800. You fought your own men down to bring me back and keep me here where I can help take down Skynet and keep an eye on Reese and Star. You let Blair go when she busted me out of your base and you haven't ever held that against her. You trusted me to take care of your wife and daughter when the machines found our convoy last year. There's only six people in the world that really think I'm human, Connor. You were the second one to know what they'd done to me and trust me anyway. That means a lot."

Connor cleared his throat. There was a bit of cereal stuck in it, of course.

"What do you need help getting ready, then? We haven't got a lot of time before Blair's scavenger team gets back." Glancing at his watch, Connor calculated a rough estimate, but Marcus beat him to it.

"We've got about five hours and forty minutes assuming everything goes well on their end. That should be enough time. I already tracked down Star and Kyle. Kyle's made friends with one of the tailors and he's gone to see if she has anything that can do for a wedding dress. Star went to get some of the other kids and bring back flowers."

"You sent a bunch of kids out to get _flowers_?" Connor snarled at Wright. What was the idiot thinking, sending kids out of the base for anything?

"Star wanted to help and Victoria suggested they make it a field trip. They've got enough guns with them; Victoria took Young and Yuan along with her." Marcus dismissed Connor's concerns.

Considering, Connor eventually nodded agreement. Allison Young and Ricky Yuan were both good in a fight even if they were new to the unit. With the elderly Victoria keeping an eye out, they'd do alright staying inside the base perimeter and the minefield. She'd managed her own bunch of survivors outside L.A. for years and helped organize the prisoners during the escape from Skynet Central, she was more then competent to watch a few kids.

"What else do you need?"

"The minister, a room, the day off and Kate."

"You've got the room and the day off. I'll check on the minister, but I'm fairly sure she'll do it. If not there's a navy chaplain on the trade patrol and he'll be back from his tour today. What do you need Kate for?"

"She's Blair's friend, she should be there and I'm going to need someone to get Blair into whatever Kyle comes up with for a dress."

"I'll go find her. When Allison gets back, I'll ask her to baby sit for Sarah. The second briefing hall will be clear today, you can have it. Anything else?"

Marcus grinned and shook his head "No, I already talked to the cooks and they're going to try to manage something. Once you, Kate, Kyle and Star are ready that will be everyone."

When John informed Kate they'd be attending a wedding she had initially thought he was kidding. After he explained about Blair's note, the rings and Marcus's preparations, she was torn between laughter and joyful tears. She'd been worried ever since Blair had made her intentions toward the troubled cyborg clear, not sure if Marcus was the best choice for her friend. His reaction to the unorthodox proposal helped soothe her doubts considerably.

Kate radioed Wright to tell him to include two extra people on his guest list: Winch, the mechanic who had taken care of Blair's plane and kept her in the sky since Judgment Day and a young man named Matthew Sayles whose brother had been Blair's first flight teacher and wingman, HKAK. Marcus hadn't thought to invite Winch, though he knew the man from his long hours in the base's machine shops and Blair had never mentioned Sayles to him. Kate assured him that Blair would be happier if Sayles was there and he took her word for it. Both men agreed to attend.

Kyle's tailor friend Maria was only too happy to produce an old white dress from the piles of clothing scavenged for later recycling and do as much in the way of repair and cleaning as possible before the ceremony. Kyle had offered politely to help her clean the dress only to have Marcus haul him off to work on setting up the briefing hall. The older man did the heavy lifting faster then a forklift and a team of movers could have, leaving Kyle to sweep and clean.

Kate radioed Marcus a few minutes before 3 o'clock to let him know that Blair had returned with her scavenger party right on time. Kate and Star would meet her at the perimeter and have her in the briefing hall as soon as possible.

Marcus had everything ready. He, Connor, Kyle, Sayles and Winch were scrubbed clean and dressed in their most well-preserved uniforms. There had even been time for all the men to shave. One of Kate's nurses had been putting herself through school as a hair dresser before Judgment Day forced an early field exam and upon hearing that Marcus was getting married she insisted that he let her at least trim the shaggy mop his hair had grown into since he'd last had inclination and time to shave most of it off.

He'd managed to convert the briefing hall into something that could stand in for a chapel, moving the rows of seats to either side to form an aisle and re-arranging the podiums in front so the elderly minister had somewhere to place her bible and something to lean against. She patted his arm awkwardly, trying to soothe his nerves despite her own misgivings about the religious status of cyborgs. She'd hesitated when Connor asked her to perform the marriage, but decided that anyone who was human enough to fall in love was human enough to get married.

The one thing that Marcus had not been able to arrange was music. He realized a few seconds after Kate opened the door to the briefing hall that even if there had been music, he would not have heard it.

Blair Williams had been waylaid by Star and Kate the instant her patrol reached base perimeter and ordered off to shower, the fastest one she'd ever had, and then forced into a white dress meant originally for someone two sizes larger and several inches shorter then she was. When she first saw the dress, her jaw dropped and she looked at Kate, confused.

"Where did that come from?"

"Marcus had Kyle get it from one of the tailors. She did the best she could repairing it in the few hours warning we had." Kate's voice implied that Blair could have been more considerate about that.

"I never expected him to find me a dress!" She rubbed at her eyes, glad that the shower had taken off her war paint, otherwise she'd be getting married with maroon streaks all across her face.

"I've been a bit surprised myself. You'll have to see everything else he managed."

With Kate's guidance and the proper application of pins, tape and ribbon, the dress was secured. Blair insisted on re-applying her war paint along with some of her stash of make-up in spite of Kate's protest. Marcus was going to get her the way she was. She nearly broke into tears again when the silent but ecstatic Star presented her with a bouquet of wild daisies and other plants, mostly flowering weeds. Star had even gathered up colorful leaves along with some more daisy petals and stuffed them into a small basket when Victoria had told her about flower girls.

Blair allowed Kate to delay her further to brush out her hair for her and style it as much as she could in five minutes. Kate and Star had already tidied themselves up and put on their best clothes. The metal star on Star's police hat was gleaming bright with fresh polish. Kate's dress was one she had saved from the stores in Crystal Peak before the Resistance had been forced to abandon that facility by Skynet attacks. She'd worn it at her own wedding since actual wedding dresses had apparently not been deemed necessary for life in a post-nuclear world by the US Government.

Ready as they ever would be, Blair followed Kate and Star to the room where Marcus was waiting for her. She was last to go in because Kate had to warn everyone that she'd arrived and Star wanted to spread her 'flowers' on the aisle before Blair went down.

Marcus hardly noticed Star or her flowers, though later he would assure the little girl that he loved them. As soon as Kate opened the door, he caught sight of Blair and nothing else mattered. Her dress didn't fit; it was too short to cover up the heavy combat boots stained with mud and worse that thumped heavily as she walked across the bare concrete floor of the room. The shade of her lipstick was perfectly matched by the dark red stripe of war paint running across her face from temple to temple. Her bouquet was mostly weeds. His mind knew exactly what species of weeds she was holding and also knew exactly how fast she was moving in those combat boots and if he'd wanted to he probably could have figured out where she'd been walking to acquire that particular shade of mud on them. He didn't care at all.

Blair was walking down an aisle, in a wedding dress and he was the one waiting for her at the end. He didn't even hear Connor swallow a laugh as he caught sight of the combat boots and the weeds. If he had, there might have been a complication while the groom punched out one of his best men.

When Blair stood across from him, he knew he was still a man more clearly then he had since he woke up two years ago, covered in mud and screaming at the sky. A machine couldn't possibly feel what he was feeling now. If it could, they wouldn't be fighting this war. Once Marcus would have thought that he himself wouldn't have been able to feel this strongly, but his second chance had changed many things about his life. He felt more alive right now, looking at Blair while the old minister started reading out the words of the ceremony, then he had when he stole his first car or when he was first chased by the police down the freeway back in Texas.

When the minister asked for the rings, Kyle and John both produced one and passed it to Marcus. He hadn't been able to make either one of them the best man over the other, so they were sharing the duties.

Nothing he'd ever said felt more right then when he said "I do."

Blair was crying, her tears streaking the red paint down her face as she repeated after the minister. She sniffed and stopped the elderly woman when she came to the end of the vows.

"….to love, honor and obey?"

"I swear to love and honor, but we're going to have to skip that last one, ma'am." Blair hiccoughed a laugh and even Marcus broke into a grin.

Connor, meanwhile, could not restrain himself and had to be punched in the stomach by Kyle to halt his laughs. Kate's glare promised dire consequences for her husband, which seemed even more effective then Kyle's elbow at silencing the man.

"With that in mind, do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband?" the old minister smiled at Blair's amendment, not at all put off her stride.

"With that in mind, I do." Blair's voice was hardly more then a whisper, her throat was so tight with tears.

Marcus didn't wait for permission; he pulled Blair against him and kissed her. He only let her go when she kneed him, gently, in the groin as her thumping on his back had escaped his notice for the first few seconds. He wheezed a few times before apologizing for getting carried away.

At that Connor, of course, could not be silenced even by Kate and Kyle both. He did manage to control himself by the time an off-duty cook knocked on the door and brought in a food that had been the closest imitation possible of a cake. It was primarily composed of Twinkies, but no one let that stop them. Blair smeared her first piece across Marcus's face and he bit her fingers gently when she slipped the second piece into his mouth. He resisted the temptation to return her favor, but compromised by making his piece three times the size of hers which left plenty on her face after she got most of it into her mouth.

There was a minimum of chatting before Marcus swept Blair up into his arms to carry her off. Connor had given him the day off, but Marcus and Blair both had work the next day that could not be put off or re-assigned. Blair had to go over the material she'd brought in today, most of it urgently needed medicine and food. Marcus's expertise with machines was required to get several vehicles ready for a joint attack with the Nevada Resistance scheduled just three days from now. He planned to make the most of the time they had to themselves.

From Marcus's arms, Blair tossed her bouquet of weeds into the air. Little Star raced forward to catch it and beamed at everyone as she waved the thing around. Kyle almost tried explaining to her what it meant, but then decided it could wait until she was older.

John and Kate watched Marcus carry Blair out, both of them smiling as they remembered their own wedding which had not been so very different from this one.

"Your bouquet didn't have weeds, though." John murmured into Kate's hair as he pulled her into a long embrace.

"John Connor!" Kate thumped him on the back of the head.

"What? You would have looked fantastic in combat boots though."

Kate thumped him again before he kissed her.

Though John Connor couldn't bench press motorcycles like Marcus could, he was more then strong enough to pick Kate up and carry her out the door. The Connors had their own work to do in the morning but they weren't going to let that get in the way of following Marcus' and Blair's examples.

Kyle Reese grinned wistfully after the two couples before he set about cleaning up. Someday he'd find someone, he knew. He wanted the sort of love he saw between Marcus and Blair, Kate and John. It sure seemed like it was worth waiting for.


	5. Her Machine Gun Man

Her Machine Gun Man

"Wright!" Connor's shout took Marcus by surprise. He'd figured he had at least another two or three minutes. Dismissing the thought from his mind, Marcus drove his fist into Barnes' face again. He felt the cheekbone give way under his blow and gave a satisfied snarl.

Connor yelled something else at him but Marcus didn't catch what it was. Barnes had his attention at the moment.

"Do it you fucking metal bastard" Barnes' voice was muffled by blood and a swollen face. Marcus' first punch had knocked out a tooth or two. Honestly, Marcus was a bit surprised that Barnes was still conscious. He'd only delivered the two head blows, true, but Barnes had to be in an incredible amount of pain. "_Terminate_ me, fucker."

Connor grabbed Marcus by the back of his uniform and hauled with all his strength. Refusing to give in to Barnes or the deadly rage in his own head, Marcus let Connor manhandle him away from the bloodied, broken soldier on the floor.

He could hear Connor on the radio, yelling for medics to come get Barnes to the infirmary. Somehow he didn't care very much. He let the other man shove him along to Connor's office. There was a new solider, Marcus idly recalled that the man's name was Wisher, waiting to give a report to Connor.

"Later, Wisher." Connor's voice didn't invite questions or comments. Wisher scrambled for the door and out of the way. Once Wisher was gone, Connor shut the door behind the man and turned to stare at the man he thought he'd gotten to know pretty well these last two years.

"What the fuck was that about, Wright? Give me one damn reason I shouldn't get fifty soldiers in here to blast you to bits."

"He's one of the guys that attacked Blair this morning." Marcus' voice was as cold and inhuman as Connor had ever heard it.

"You don't know that. Blair hasn't been able to identify any of them."

"I know it was him, Connor. I saw Blair's war paint smeared on his hand and I smelled her blood on him." Marcus rubbed casually at his knuckles, not even bloodied from the beating he'd just been giving Barnes.

Connor stared. "What?" He'd heard just fine, but he couldn't quite credit it. Marcus had _smelled_ her blood?

"When I saw him, I just knew the paint on his hand was Blair's and I knew the blood I was smelling was hers too. I knew it the same way I know that it's 75.3 degrees in here right now, or that it's been two years, three months, fifteen days, nine hours, forty-seven minutes and fifteen seconds – now sixteen, since the first time I met Blair." Marcus dropped himself into one of the chairs in the office and it groaned under his weight. He weighted 322.4 pounds and he knew that too. He hated knowing things like that.

The larger part of his anger drained out of Connor as he absorbed what Marcus said. His bright green eyes closed for a few seconds as he considered.

"You didn't kill him, did you?" Connor kept his voice calm.

"He was alive when you dragged me off, wasn't he?"

"Wright." Not taking any evasions then, Marcus snorted to himself and shook his head.

"He'll live. I didn't break anything too important." That, of course, depending on your definition of important, but he hadn't broken anything necessary for living.

"And what the fuck am I supposed to do now, Marcus? The entire base will know about this as soon as the medics scrape Barnes off the floor. No matter what an asshole he is or what he did, they'll want you punished. The ones that still think you're a machine will say this is proof you're a monster."

"I didn't kill him, did I? And what the fuck would a Terminator care if one human ambushed another one in the dark and beat the shit out of her?" Marcus was on his feet again before Connor saw him move. Despite his lack of height the angry cyborg radiated menace and he loomed even with Connor standing nearly half a foot taller.

"He went after Blair, my _wife_, the day after our wedding. He got a bunch of his fucking friends and set a trap for her when she was alone. They broke her arm, broke three of her ribs and there's hardly a spot on her that isn't black or blue. The only reason she can't fucking tell you Barnes did it is that she's too drugged up on the god-damn pain medicines to talk!" Marcus' emotions were usually under amazing control, but by the time he was done speaking he flushed with anger and his voice was raised to a roar.

Connor reached out and grabbed the other man by the shoulder, meeting his irate gaze. "I know, Marcus. You say Barnes was one of the ones that attacked Blair and I believe you. As soon as he's cleared to be moved, I'm going to send Barnes to the biggest shit hole of a base I can find and make sure they know why I'm sending him away. Even if I arranged some sort of trial, that's all I could do. We can't afford to waste a single body, Marcus. And there are going to be folks here that want to waste you unless I figure out some sort of punishment for taking this into your own hands."

Marcus opened his mouth to remind Connor again just how much Barnes deserved this, and more, for what he'd put Blair through, not to mention the times he'd tried to get Marcus killed on missions or the two occasions on which Barnes had actually tried to kill him right out when he thought he could blame it on Skynet. Connor cut him off.

"I know he deserved it, Marcus! I know!" Connor's own voice over-rode the angry words Marcus had planned. "That doesn't mean the rest of my men will accept it! I need you here as a soldier, an ally and a friend. I can't risk letting their suspicions and fears force me in to losing you."

"Find something then. Whatever punishment you come up with, I'll do it" Marcus grated out the words. "There were more men then just Barnes in that hanger this morning, Connor. You might want to wait to decide on the punishment for a few days. I'm going to earn some more."

John Connor stared into Marcus' eyes and slowly, he nodded. "I didn't hear you say that, Wright. Get out of here, I have to start dealing with this before rumors get started."

As Connor had anticipated, there was hell to pay for the events of the day after Marcus' and Blair's wedding. A week later he was still dealing with it. Blair's ambush and on-going stint in the infirmary had rallied a great deal of the base's population firmly behind Marcus. No one had debated Connor's verdict for Barnes and once he was stable he was being shipped off to a bunker in Alaska. Despite that, the manner in which Marcus dealt with Barnes had gotten too many people riled up. Marcus had accepted a month-long rotation on the hazardous duty roster along with a heavy dose of menial labor without protest, just as he'd promised. The way he took his punishment in stride helped with some of the folks on base. The ones that weren't placated by Wright's behavior or Connor's punishment were probably the ones who wouldn't ever accept Marcus Wright as a member of the human race. Connor couldn't bring himself to care much for their opinion and, thankfully, they were a minority among his soldiers.

He glanced at Kate's preliminary report, sitting on his desk and looking rather innocent. It said that Barnes would never have use of his right arm again; Marcus had shattered the elbow joint and broken all of the bones in his hand. There was nothing to be done with it. It was pretty much the same story with his right foot. The rest of the damage would heal, given time, though Barnes would have some very nasty scars.

When Kate's voice came through his radio Connor was hoping for good news. The terse command to get his ass down to the infirmary shattered that hope. Kate rarely used even moderate foul language and her voice had real strain in it.

There was already a crowd outside the infirmary when Connor arrived.

"Connor! I fucking told you he'd go crazy!" Lt. Juarez, a munitions specialist who'd been with Connor's unit for years was just the loudest of the voices all yelling the same thing.

"Everyone, quiet! NOW!" Connor's bellow brought silence and alerted Kate that he'd arrived. She stepped out of the infirmary and firmly closed the door behind her.

"What in God's name is going on here, Kate?"

"Marcus found three of the others that attacked Blair." Kate's voice was calm; it was the only calm voice in the hallway. There was a half second pause.

"And he fuckin' killed 'em!" Connor didn't see who yelled it, but it didn't matter. Soon everyone was screaming at the top of their lungs, trying to be heard. A few seemed to be siding with Marcus, others were ranting that they'd always known he'd turn on them. Or that he was too dangerous to keep alive.

Kate Connor's voice was rarely raised, but she made herself heard as well as her husband had. "ENOUGH!" When the shocked silence descended, Kate cleared her throat and began again. "That's enough of that nonsense. No one is dead. Marcus called me himself and reported what he'd done. All three men are being taken care of. None of them has worse then a few broken bones. No one is going to die."

There weren't many people who would doubt Kate Connor when she used that tone of voice. Everyone in the base put their lives in her hands when they were wounded or sick; they knew she didn't lie about your condition to you or anyone else. She'd tell you if you were going to die and if she said you'd live, you lived.

One of the men who'd joined Connor's unit along with Barnes had opened his mouth to protest, but Kate silenced him with a glare.

"For anyone who thinks Wright is a dangerous, out-of-control killing machine, you better think about this: he tracked down four of the men that attacked his wife while she was by herself and left her bleeding alone on the floor of the hanger. When he found them, he didn't kill any of them even though we all know damned well he could have. Instead, he beat them up and he called the medics for them. Wright even carried one of them to me himself.

"If you're stupid enough to think a machine would do that, you better not ever show your face in this infirmary again. I know most of you men wouldn't be so generous if you laid hands on someone who beat your wife more then half to death. Now get the hell out of my hallway, I have patients in here that need rest and quiet."

Kate dismissed the crowd from her mind and as soon as she re-entered the infirmary the crowd began to disperse. John watched, rather amazed by Kate's handling of the situation. He couldn't have diffused it half as well. When the last of the soldiers shuffled away, John followed his wife into the infirmary.

"What'd you call me down here for, Kate? You handled that beautifully."

"Oh, I just wanted you to see me do it. Too, there was always the chance they might not listen to me. I am just a simple doctor, after all." John caught the meaning behind her words and winced inside. He knew that once the immediate problem was past he'd be having more words with Kate about her desire to be a more active leader in the Resistance and see more field time. He privately wondered what the men would treat her like if she got her wish and lead them more often herself if this was how they reacted to her as just a 'simple doctor.'

"How bad are they?" Connor could identify the three men in question easily. They were all freshly bloodied, for one. He caught sight of Wright sitting by Blair's bed; she was still a bit out of it from the drugs but her fingers were clenched around his hand. Wright saw Connor looking at him and shrugged then returned his attention to his wife.

"Nothing serious, like I said. Broken bones, bruises. All of them have broken feet and broken hands. One, Gallagher, has a very nasty concussion but I think he did that himself." Kate shook her head.

"They kicked Blair when she went down, didn't they? That's why he broke their feet." Connor was musing to himself, but Kate nodded in agreement. They knew Marcus could probably hear them, but he didn't respond.

"Get them ready to move. As soon as the next supply plane comes in, I'm sending them out to whatever base it comes from. They'll get the same as Barnes did. I shouldn't have any complaints about it."

"What if you do?"

"I'll deal with them. We're not going to lose Marcus because of a bunch of fools."

Marcus settled himself into a chair in Connor's office and waited for the taller man to speak. He'd been called in from his work repairing the outer defenses to speak with Connor about something important; the kid running messages today hadn't known what it was though.

"I thought about not telling you until it was too late, but I figure you deserve more honesty then that, Marcus. This morning the last two men that were involved in Blair's attack came to me and confessed. They're being transferred to a bunker in Arizona this afternoon when the supply plane leaves. I've made arrangements with the commander there to assign them twice the punishment that I've had you on here."

Marcus stared at Connor, not responding. He didn't realize that his fist had tightened around the arm of the chair until the arm gave way with a metallic screech of protest. Grunting in annoyance, Marcus tossed the now-worthless hunk of twisted metal into the recycling bin beside Connor's desk.

"So you don't want me to find them before they leave." There was only the faintest suggestion of a question in Marcus's voice. Connor's gaze searched Marcus's face, trying to figure out if the other man was joking.

"That's right. They're going to be punished for what they did and they won't have a chance to cause any further problems for you or Blair. I'm going easier on them then I'd like since they came to me and confessed of their own free will. They seemed to think that something might happen to them if they didn't."

Marcus's face twisted into a smile that he hadn't worn since his time in prison. The other convicts had shied away when he smiled like that and so had most of the guards. "Probably right, too. Why shouldn't something happen to them anyway? They're still guilty even if they came crying to you rather then face me."

"First off, I don't need to disperse another would-be riot because you beat the shit out of two more men. I think you made your point very clearly with Barnes and the other three. Second, if you show the men that you're willing to follow the rules it'd go a long way to clearing the bad feelings floating around."

"I don't care what anyone –" Connor cut him off.

"Shut up, Wright. You might not care but it still matters. You think Kyle and Star like having half the base treat them like traitors because they're your friends? How many fights has Kyle gotten into because he defends you? Even Star's had at least one tussle with some of the other kids. Blair won't say anything but she can't enjoy the looks she gets either. You start showing a little care what people think about you, it'll go a long way toward making their lives easier. Yours too, but I know you don't give a shit about that."

Marcus's glare faded as Connor brought out the heavy guns. He knew that Kyle, Star and Blair all suffered because they stuck with him. Blair had taken the worst with the attack and the fall-out from her improvised rescue operation when he'd first been taken prisoner by the Resistance. Even with those two incidents aside, there had been a lot of small things that he knew about and likely more that none of them had let him get wind of. He owed all them his life.

"My word, Connor, that I won't lay a finger on the two that came to you. That enough?"

"Yeah, Marcus, that's enough. You might try showing a bit of your friendly side to some of the others. I could do with less flak myself for keeping you around."

"I have been showing off my friendly side Connor. None of you has ever seen me being _un_friendly. You'd notice right away." Marcus's unpleasant smile was back, but this one was just a shadow that flashed across his face.

"Barnes?" Connor almost didn't ask; he almost didn't want to know.

"Cuddly as a teddy bear with him, Connor."

"Just --," Connor ran a hand through his close-cropped hair and sighed. "Just try, Marcus, alright?"

The shorter man grinned, his normal, less frightening, half smile and left Connor's office to get back to work on the base defenses. Connor stared after him, shaking his head. Well, it would work or not. There wasn't anything else to do. Marcus was staying even if Connor had to beat sense into each and every man and woman on base personally. It would be a lot easier, though, if the damn cyborg would just show more then five people that he had a heart.


	6. Wait Half An Hour For Good News

Wait Half An Hour For Good News

The rapid-fire spray of a T-600's mini-gun chewed into the concrete rubble that Marcus Wright had taken shelter behind. It seemed the Terminators guarding the Skynet supply depot had detected the intruders. Looking around the corner with his trusty mirror-taped-to-a-pipe, Marcus checked the position of the four 600s they were facing. Three were bearing down on Connor, Kyle, Sayles and the others. Only one of the machines was coming at him, but he was alone. He'd volunteered to scout around the side of the depot and been caught out of the group when the 600's attacked.

Two minutes left, Marcus thought to himself while he considered the situation. He only had four grenades with him, his mini-gun and the knife Blair had given him for an anniversary gift last month. Cursing himself for going light on the firepower, Marcus loaded a magazine into the mini-gun. Though hundreds of pounds lighter and much more compact then a T-600, he was just as strong as the giant killing machines were. The huge mini-guns were nearly impossible for human soldiers to carry un-mounted, but Marcus didn't have trouble turning Skynet's weapons on its machines. Some of the other fighters were put off by the ease with which he toted the huge weapon and directed its fire, but most of them came around when they saw how it chewed through the machines.

Marcus threw a pair of grenades toward the trio of Terminators raining fire down on Connor's position. He waited for the booms so the dust cloud of their explosions would cover him while he came around the edge of the rubble pile to blast away at the 600 that was pinning him down. His spray of bullets took the thing square in the torso, blasting loose bits of its hydraulics and stabilizers. He dragged the stream of fire over to the arm carrying the 600's weapon and blasted away until the mechanisms were nothing but slag and scrap.

Howling a battle-cry Marcus charged the 600, shifting his mini-gun to his back in mid-stride. He knew that wrestling with a Terminator was a good way to get himself killed; the prototype T-800 Infiltrator back in San Francisco had taught him that. He didn't plan on wrestling this machine, though. He ducked under its slow but deadly punch and came up behind the murderous robot. His fingers found the exposed motor cortex circuits in the back of the thing's head and yanked them free. Disoriented, the 600 could do nothing but flail about as Marcus adjusted his grip on the metal skull, planted a foot on the thing's pelvis and heaved.

The few seconds of distraction his grenades had bought him ran out just about the time he ripped the T-600's skull off. A torrent of bullets from the other Terminators chased him down as he scrambled away from the wreck of the one he'd just scrapped. With a grunt, Marcus hurled himself into the air and crashed down behind his pile of rubble once more. He'd felt the impact and the momentary spikes of pain that meant he'd been hit by a few of those bullets. He hesitated for a few moments and shook his head, grinning to himself. He wasn't hurt, but he'd have some interesting wounds on his ass to explain to Blair when he saw her next.

One minute left.

"CONNOR!" Marcus bellowed over the exchange of gunfire between the Resistance soldiers and the Terminators.

"WHAT?!" There was a pause, followed by a massive explosion as Kyle hurled some of his own grenades at the machines pinning them down.

Marcus shifted his position slightly. With the 600 that had been going for him taken care of, the three concentrating on the other soldiers were exposed to his fire.

"COVER!" He waited three seconds after yelling his warning and opened fire. The poorly armored flanks of the three remaining Terminators buckled and twisted under his steady stream of bullets, exposing delicate internal components to the lighter fire from Connor, Kyle and their team. Kyle threw another pair of grenades; the kid had a gift with explosives. Two of the Terminators staggered and fell, the red glow of their optics dimming. The last remained standing, mindlessly advancing on the rubble pile the humans crouched behind.

Fifteen seconds.

"CONNOR!"

"I'M A BIT BUSY, WRIGHT!" Marcus shook his head. It was just one Terminator left. No big deal.

"KATE HAD A MESSAGE FOR YOU" He figured that'd get Connor's attention.

"WHAT, NOW?!"

"SHE ORDERED YOU TO GET YOUR ASS BACK TO BASE IN ONE PIECE, CONNOR!" Marcus broke off as the damaged 600 swung its gun his way and sprayed him with lead. The other soldiers took advantage and pounded it with fire as its back was turned. From the lack of further large explosions, Marcus guessed that Kyle had run out of grenades.

When the 600's mini-gun clicked empty, there was a pause as the machine evaluated its choices and the Resistance fighters reloaded.

"SHE'S HAVING ANOTHER BABY." Message delivered precisely half an hour after Kate had radioed their team and gotten patched through to him. Marcus grinned to himself as he leapt over his rubble pile and joined the others in blasting the final machine to scrap metal.

As the machine died, Connor and the others emerged from behind their own bits of rubble and debris. Connor's face was flushed and he looked ready to spit bullets.

"You waited until the middle of a fucking fire fight with four Terminators to tell me that my wife is pregnant? When in God's name did you even get a chance to talk to her!" Marcus's bland expression didn't seem to be helping Connor's temper.

"She radioed just before we left for this scouting run. We couldn't raise you, so I took the message. I told her I'd give it to you. I did. What's the problem?" Marcus let his usual grin creep across his face as Connor turned a deeper shade of red and stalked toward him.

"That was almost half an hour ago!" Connor towered over Marcus, yelling down at the shorter man. Usually no one noticed that Marcus was a bit below average height. Not many people were willing to get close enough to him to compare and he always seemed to fill up more space then his body actually occupied. Connor was mad enough that he kept stalking closer until he was almost toe to toe with the more compact cyborg.

"Thirty minutes and" Marcus paused "52 seconds ago."

The moment Connor realized what was going on, his hand tightened on his rifle and it started to swing into line with Marcus's chest until Kyle darted forward and hauled it back down.

"Relax, Connor. He _did_ tell you, after all. And we're all fine. You'll be seeing Kate in a few hours, once we gather the supplies and get back to base." Kyle's gift for calm, reasonable tones and soothing words had helped diffuse a number of tense situations between fighters in Connor's unit before. Connor lowered the gun and let it fall to his side. He took a deep breath.

A few seconds later Marcus was roaring with laughter as Connor cursed him with every foul word he'd ever heard or thought of. Every slur against the machines, every insult that had been hurled at Marcus by the men and women that hated and feared him for his differences was spat out between streams of more generic curses and expletives.

Kyle shook his head at both of them as he wrapped Connor's injured fist with the bandages from his first aid kit.

"You're lucky you didn't break your hand, Connor." Kyle grumbled as he tied off the dressing. "You ought to know better then to punch him like that. What the hell is going on with you two anyway?"

Connor continued to curse at Marcus, quieter now. Still chuckling, Marcus explained.

"Connor made me swear that if I ever had really good news, I'd wait half an hour after getting it before I told him unless I was sure he was wearing body armor."

"I didn't expect you to take it literally! Fucking robot." Connor was still angry, but his mouth twitched as he spat the insult, hiding a grin.

"Why not? Last time I gave you good news right off, you ended up in the infirmary for X-rays." Marcus laughed again at the memory.

"What? What'd you do to him, Marcus?" Kyle was shocked. He didn't think Marcus would ever hurt Connor, but then until a few minutes ago he hadn't thought he'd ever see Connor pull a gun on the cyborg either.

"Bruised three of my damn ribs. I was there when he got the news that Blair was pregnant with Tyler. Couldn't even breathe to tell him he was about to break my spine he had me in such a bear hug." Connor's growl was more then half simulated now and he wasn't cursing.

Kyle snorted, restraining himself. "So you made him promise to wait for good news to avoid being hugged to death?"

That description of events sent Marcus back into howls of laughter while Connor glowered darkly at the pair of them.

"It made a great deal more sense when I was on the morphine. Assholes. Both of you."

Connor gave the bandage on his hand a tug to make sure it was on properly then stomped his way back to the rest of the soldiers who were organizing the supplies taken from the Skynet depot. He was already yelling at them to be ready for an airlift in 20 minutes.


	7. Continuity Note

Author's Note

There may be some confusion regarding how my stories fit together. This should help clear it up. All my Terminator stories are in the same timeline which takes place after Salvation and follows the events of the movie almost-exactly. They can be considered an Alternate Universe since Marcus doesn't die, but that's explained in the stories.

I don't just post all the stories together as one fic because they're distinct to me. They can be read alone, or together. They're meant to be read together, though. I also split them apart because sometimes I get stuck on one chapter in one story, so I jump to another story where I'm not feeling so confined.

1975 – Marcus and Alicia Wright born in Abilene, Texas – August 22nd

1970 – Tyler Wright born

2001 – Thomas Walker born

2002 – Kyle Reese born

2003 – Marcus Wright executed

2003-2004 – Dr. Serena Kogen dies of cancer

July 25th, 2004 – Judgment Day

2010 – Derek and Kyle Reese separated in LA tunnels

2011 – Derek Reese joins the Resistance

2012 – Kyle Reese finds Star (Star is 5 years old)

2018 – Events of Terminator: Salvation

**Transplant Tent – March 15****th**

**FleshGrowBack Lab – March 15****th**

**Being a Good Guy – May 18****th**

2019 – Sarah Jeanette Connor born

2020

**Wedding Rings and Combat Boots – February 4****th**

**Her Machine Gun Man – February 5****th**

**Mistakes Made – March 10****th**

**Letter – March 25****th**

**Fish – May 2****nd**

Tyler Wright-Williams born – December 3rd

2021

**Lullabies – April 20****th**

**Wounded – July 21****st**

2022

**Safe**

Robert Connor born

2023

**WHAM! (Entrapment) – February 2****nd**

2024 – Korinna Wright-Williams born

2028

**Wait Half An Hour For Good News – January 15****th**

Kyle Connor born (October)

2029

**Kyle's Fate – March 3****rd**

Kyle Reese sent back to save Sarah Connor

2032

John Connor dies – July 4th

Skynet's last command hub is destroyed – July 5th

**The Fate We Made – July 6****th**


End file.
